Nigerian troops arrive to a tumultous welcome in Monrovia, signposting the return of peace

Joy unspeakable for war-weary Liberians: the Eagles have landed

THISDAY
9 November 2012

The Nigerian Army last night said as the
fourth-best military in global peacekeeping operation, it has no
difficulties moving to Mali to restore
peace there. In a reaction to a news story by The Guardian of London newspaper, Director of Public Relations and Information, Nigerian Army, Col. Mohammed Yerima, told THISDAY that the story was intended by the newspaper to diminish “the successes recorded by Nigeria in peacekeeping operations.”

The Guardian had alleged that the state
of the Nigerian Army has delayed plans
for a military intervention in Mali. It also claimed that the country’s army lacks the capability to fight on the frontline.But Yerima said the story was a complete underestimation of the strength of the Nigerian Armed Forces and what the service could do.

He said: “I read the story. At first, I was
to issue an official reaction. But I
dropped the idea, because the news story was foolish. The newspaper deliberately turned truth on its head.” He further said: “There is no force on the
West African sub-region that can match
Nigeria’s capability. We restored peace
in both Liberia and Sierra-Leone. We are at the moment maintaining peace in parts of the country. “Our training programmes are going on as scheduled and we also have modern equipment, as an army,” Yerima added.

He advised foreign media organisations
to seek clarification about Nigeria’s
military capability to avoid misleading
the world. He also reiterated Nigeria’s standpoint on global peace and added that the country’s armed forces are ready and capable of effective peace operations in any part of the sub-region.

The newspaper had reported that Nigerian army’s Mali mission had been
stalled following doubts of its operational capability. According to the story, “A senior source in Mali told The Guardian that a lack of training and discipline among Nigerian troops – who are being heavily relied on by regional bloc Ecowas to oust Islamists in control of northern Mali – is becoming increasingly apparent.

“The Nigerian army is in a shocking state. In reality there is no way they are
capable of forward operations in Mali –
their role is more likely to be limited to
manning checkpoints and loading trucks. “The Nigerian forces lack training and
kit, so they simply don’t have the
capability to carry out even basic military manoeuvres. They have poor discipline and support. They are more likely to play a behind-the-scenes role in logistics and providing security.”

21 Responses to NIGERIAN ARMY RESPOND TO AFUA HIRSCH’S CAMPAIGN OF DEFAMATION AND MISINFORMATION, SAY ” WE ARE FOURTH BEST IN GLOBAL PEACEKEEPING, MOST CAPABLE ARMY IN THIS SUB-REGION”

Col Yerima, permission to speak freely. Your initial reaction matched mine exactly, treat this nonsense with contempt. But I am telling what I have seen and heard personally, this rubbish is being cited by serious senior defence analysts in the European defence establishment. It will become fact simply by repetition.
Please issue a detailed official response and directly challenge the Guardian to name their sources or at least identify them by rank and/or appointment.
Well done for the response but we need to take the fight to the enemy. They are spoiling our name and finding a receptive audience

This is the first time, I reading this report, I didn’t believe the report or the girl was worth my time( she is still not worth it), but to say this obviously bigoted / baised / stage-managed report is damaging, is to say the least. The girl deserves every bit of insult / abuse directed at her/ her personality by members of this blog. She showed how un-professional she is and wrote like a child who is ret**ded. She insulted us, our values, personalities and a nation who practically feed her while growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, and even in the 90’s.

Reading the report, it is clear that it was all about hurling insults at Nigeria as a means of assuaging her frustrations. It simply was not intended to be a report. The claims, against the backdrop of links which I have posted on this blog, are simply figments of a fertile imagination. Her report, juxtaposed against documented and verifiable reality, becomes reduced to the realm of fantasy.

Weaned on the obtuse and delusional notion of some mythical rivalry with Nigeria, the reality is that in terms of men, materiel, training, exposure, combat experience and skills sets, Nigeria and Ghana are comprehensively MISMATCHED. Simply put, they are military laggards – a mere parade ground and battle shy army.

Three crucial adjuncts to military power are ECONOMICS, GEOGRAPHY and DEMOGRAPHY

Economics: There are fifteen countries in West Africa. Nigeria alone boasts a GDP which is DOUBLE the combined total for the rest 14 West African countries PUT TOGETHER. Makes you wonder what type of rivalry which those economic bantamweights keep on drooling about.
Military hardware is not handed out by the Salvation Army stores. It has to be paid for. At this time, all of West Africa in combination CANNOT match a Nigeria intent on an arms procurement spree.

Geography: The sheer diversity of Nigeria’s landscape, four times the size of Ghana, is ONE reason why we have so many skills sets available to us – amphibious operations, littoral warfare, desert warfare, mountain warfare, jungle warfare and airborne operations. Add to that, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and counterpiracy which a militarily uneventful Ghana are blank clueless about.

That gap is unlikely yo be bridged. Whereas Nigeria’s Chappal Waddi at 2,419 metres is the highest point in West Africa, the highest point in Ghana – Hill Afadjato is only about 880metres high. Ghana is a flatland with no prospects for mountain warfare.

Without a a hydrographically complex river delta such as the Niger Delta of Nigeria, Ghana are similarly clueless and hold no meaningful prospects for littoral warfare. We shall always be ahead in that sphere as well.

Being a sleepy republic where they take it lying down, there is NO comparison – not in training, not in combat exposure between Nigeria’s FIGHTING special forces and Ghana’s do-nothing so called Special Forces who are consigned to quelling riots and monitoring elections.

Nigeria will always be ahead of Ghana in desert warfare. Unlike Ghana which barely stretches into the Sudan savanna, Nigeria stretches from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahara desert – the realm of sand dunes and oases. That means we can train for and simulate potential desert warfare scenarios in Mali, right here in Nigeria.

So much for always positing that if it is not happening in Ghana, it cannot be happening in Nigeria. Talk about mixing apples and oranges. Ghana is Ghana, Nigeria is NIGERIA. We do not play in the same clueless, hapless military pond.

Demography: A critical adjunct to military power is population size(manpower availability). That is why military power calculations take into cognisance the number of persons reaching military age annually and those within the age 15-49 military recruitment pool.

What resembles rivalry between 24 million Ghanaians and 168 million Nigerians..a 7:1 mismatch in favour of Nigeria?

in ONLY TWO facets of activity – airborne operations and jungle warfare can Ghana fathomably hope compare ANY TRAINING notes of any sort with Nigeria.

As for combat experience, they are still a a timid, parade ground army who know next to nothing about asymmetric or conventional military operations.

In closing, it is photos such as you find at the top of this page which have jingoists and delusional airheads such as Afua Hirsch bellyaching. Unable to find a Ghanaian replica of such photos, that for a supposed rival, and unwillingly to see the wide military berth between Nigeria and Ghana expanded even further, Afua Hirsch has simply gone malevolent.

For those who believe this to be the stand-alone and offkey tune of a loose cannon, HOW MANY Ghanaians have called her out on account of this diatribe? In Ghana where the newspapers, blogs and forums pretend to know Nigeria too well and take Panadol on account of Nigeria’s headache, nobody has read this report or it sits well with the haters?

TO be honest this is more the point than the girls motivations etc (although I’m still curious as to whether this is journalistic laziness, personal animosity or a more sinister agenda).
I would also suggest we stop the Ghana bashing, I think this girl is more British than Ghanaian and to be honest the Ghanaians are our closest allies in the sub region. We are surrounded by Francophone nations most of which are economically unviable basketcases, who worship La Belle France. Ghana is an Anglophone nation, with a good democratic government, which seems to be working for its people. They have also stood with Naija in ECOMOG, Rwanda etc. The actions of this silly girl shouldn’t besmirch an entire nation.
From looking her up on the net I see she attends events in London (nothing of security of policy import though) so God willing one day I will attend an event she attends and wash her eye for her.
The important thing however is how our government responds to this. I have heard no response from the Nigeria High Commission in London (correct me if I’m wrong) or the Ministry of Defence or Information.
they are failing in their duty. Communications is a key element in conflict. It is not attending or holding press conferences. The key overriding theme is to SHAPE THE MESSAGE.
In other words make people hear what you want them to hear and hopefully react and behave the way you want them to behave)
There are improvements but it is still not happening.
It is not expensive, there are many Nigerians in diaspora. A scheme to get several volunteers abroad to review news and online content each day, have a daily briefing of government policy and government talking points and get them to respond immediately by social media, writing to editors etc, or to flag it up to the Ministry of Information. Have a performance indicator of responding to any derogatory comment in 6 hours and a detailed rebuttal in 24 hours.
Ensure all correspondents (particularly the hostile ones) have unfettered access to Information officers with a minimum 3 hour response time to enquiries. Speed is the key, if you respond quickly it means they have to add your point of view to the argument and gives you an avenue of counter attack.
Start promoting Nigerian operations properly. high definition high quality websites and photos updated daily with information for the press and public, Youtube videos of troops training, civilians in conflict areas. humanise the conflicts. No one wants to see a 30 minute speech by some officer, its boring and pointless, people want to see soldiers and citizens. Again its not hard, a website is easy, have a dedicated media combat team, either civilians or seconded military. give troops on patrol headcams and cheap digital cameras, again volunteers home and abroad would happily share or propagate this information, (abi una for this board go ask for money to promote our country? Of course not).
Its not hard, it just needs the will to make it happen. This is not the first time we’ve discussed poor information management and unfortunately wont be the last.
We need to shape the message

Closest allies, Peccavi? :-) E be laik you get wan “Cherley babe” for London dia wey dey read dis thread. The most adept at undercutting us regardless.

– ECOMOG: at the time when Rawlings threatened to reduce their troops in Liberia to a battalion-sized contingent, IBB kept it up to two battalions by picking up 50% of the costs entailed in their participation. That is the flip side of the story. What was altruistic about that manner of subtle arm twisting when we had 13,000 troops of our own needing sustenance while sponsoring most other contingents and financing joint operations+ECOMOG HQ ?

– During the CIV crisis last year, did they not break ranks with Nigeria and ECOWAS to line up with Zuma and Mugabe against the concensus opinion in West Africa?

– ECOMIB are in Guinea Bissau as we speak. Did they not break ranks with ECOWAS on that one – leaving Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal to fix that situation?

– MICEMA are preparing to go to Mali. As of August, which was the last time that I saw ECOWAS defence chiefs on TV news making plans at Abuja for that effort (one which directly impacts Nigeria’s national security interests on account of Malian Islamist-Boko Haram ties), Ghana were not represented. Do not be surprised if they do not turn up in Mali.

– Have they now officially buried that xenophobic plot which sought to squeeze US$300,000 from foreign traders before they are allowed to do business in Ghana, an effort which threatened to hit Nigerians the hardest?

Ghana has in the main dealt us a heavy hand through the years. They chased away our people during the Nigerian Civil War. When their economy collapsed in the 1970s, one-sixth of Ghanaians fled to Nigeria. We took in their tired, their poor and their disconsolate.

At Xmas 1982 when there were no essential commodities on their shelves, the Shagari-led FG sent 50 truckloads of rice, sugar, beans, cooking oil etc, said to have been enough to feed a quarter of a million people for one month.

In 1989, Nigerian transferred a 100% FREE squadron of twelve L29 Delfin jets to the Ghana Air Force. Not even the USA or UK have given us two free Hercules planes, let alone six used F16 or Tornado jets.

Ghana have always benefitted from oil supplies from Nigeria on credit and even so, at concessionary rates. That has indirectly translated to over one billion dollars since 1985 in savings equivalence and that for their benefit. Even after they struck oil recently, it happened that whereas the Tema Refinery was configured to process sweet Nigerian crude, Ghana’s oil is comparatively heavy and as such, the Tema Refinery could not process it. Concessionary oil continued to come in from Nigeria until the refinery was shut down and reconfigured to process the said heavy Ghanaian crude oil.

I recall that not too long ago, Nigeria loaned them US$40m to fulfill their commitment to the West African Gas Pipeline project and also gave US$13.5m with which to buy Peugeot cars for the Ghana Police Service from the Peugeot Assembly of Nigeria at Kaduna. Earlier on in 1991 when they hosted the Non Aligned Movement summit at Accra, IBB ‘dashed’ them 100 Peugeot 505 Evolution cars.

YET go to Ghana today and read their dailies or tune in to their radio stations. Every Ghanaian problem presumably has a Nigerian angle to it. Every crime committed in Ghana supposedly has a Nigerian as its mastermind. Never mind that Ghanaians appear to top the list of foreigners so far arrested in 2012 for illegal bunkering in Nigeria.

Find out how hard they tried to frustrate the operations of the same GLOBACOM which at the time was sponsoring their soccer league to the tune of US$15 million.

I am not so sure how close they think we are, to quote your own phraseology. I really do not see it. I look at them as-is..not through rose coloured spectacles. If they have a good government, good for them. I do not live there so it is of no consequence to me.

E get some fine Ghanaian girls as well, just saying……!!!
But the point still stands, we are wasting energy denigrating Ghana, it doesn’t help the cause.
This blog alone is proof positive of what is achievable. Exactly what you alluded to in the post about the Naval exercise is what I’m talking about. It costs virtually nothing to get you and other defence bloggers in for a briefing and tour of the platforms and exercise areas.
Imagine the way the story will propagate?
This blog is getting alot of attention in African security circles, what does it cost the Naija government to take Oga Beeg to these exercises or at least provide a package of pictures and briefing points.
This again is the reason why I say lets chill on the Ghana bashing, it comes across to the silent observers as arrogant, disgruntled Nigerians being boorish.
Lets look at the situation, identify the problem (and no its not Ghana!!) and proffer solutions.
AMISOM has got the idea, their media package is 1st rate, its not hard, expensive and its a win win for all.
There will always be hostile journalists, fake reports, scandalous reports, slanderous statements etc. The prerogative is to have a mechanism to counter them rather than declaring jihad on the authors country of origin.

A british film company made a movie about the niger delta(blood and oil)the other time and they did their best to depict the entirety of the nigerian people as corrupt and savage.while the nigerian police and JTF were depicted as corrupt.this film was shot on our soil.and what was our reaction to the insult.nothing..at a time when even our own journalist and reporters are projecting a sad image of the country..i just guess this isnt only about the army.anti nigerian sentimentalist are all over the commonwealth..and dont get me wrong we have more of this.blacknecks in the commonwealth

I definitely believe there is some form of amiable relationship between Ghana and Nigeria it could be much better at this stage based on our CULTURAL AND ETHNIC TIES IT IS NOT. The most recent example was Ivory Coast. The incumbent GBAGBO clearly lost through the democratic process of the ballot box after ruling with unfettered powers for 10 years. GEJ to his credit asked GBAGBO to accept defeat , it is speculated that gbagbo did not accept his phone call or obama’s phone call. Ghana and South Africa emboldened him by not standing with Nigeria .This led to a needless civil war, loss of life and the eventual military overthrow of Gbagbo did Ghana contribute one corporal or land rover to help no. This in the eyes of Military officers in Nigeria was another defining moment in terms of relationships.
In the states we call these DEFINING MOMENTS the basis of RELATIONSHIPS..Every human being takes the easy path when easy decisions are to be made but human beings who want to be defined by their actions / integrity take the RIGHT/ CORRECT PATH when hard decisions are to be made.As a result we still see tense relationships between Ivory coast and Ghana. Tense / hot and cold relationships between Nigeria and Ghana. Militarily now that every body is democratic IN THE WEST AFRICAN BLOCK MINUS MALI. Nigerian Officers will tell you if pressed regardless of Ghana’s shopping spree Ghana cannot and should not be relied on In times of combat they will tell you rely on the Guineans and the Senegalese
I don’t want this to degenerate into Ghana / Nigeria bashing because of MS AFUA’S inaccurate comments but rather we should as the blog implies stick to the gold standard of facts.
Uncle SEGE LOVE HIM / HATE HIM OR BE INDIFFERENT had to address them recently when he was invited over there that glorifying Military coups is not a good thing but a failure of political and democratic leadership.
This is sadly the situation West Africa sees itself today yet another situation has arisen in MALI and the only country not present or accounted for is Ghana this is not bashing this is fact. What good is it buying military equipment and not even using it.? if your neighbor’s house is on fire and you are to busy hiding your fire fighting equipment wait it will soon come to your house.
I will be the first person to tell you Nigeria has it’s own share of problems yet Nigeria does not go around when invited to another country or even when unprovoked to start addressing another country’s problem. this has happened with their recently deceased president may he R.I.P.
and it does not help future stronger relations.

You can trust Africans to be uncharitable and to seek to feather their own nests at the expense of others.

Right this minute, some East African brethren whose own nations have been led out of the perils of negative reportage of African affairs by foreign media, are rearing to expand the myths contained in the said contentious report. I am sure that there are more photos of East African armies here than there are anywhere else in this West African sub-region.

It is made worse by the fact that the ill-advised attempt at making Nigeria their punching bag…even after the facts have been stated and weblinks provided, is being championed by people who visit this blog. We have been so gracious as to have even posted a link to the BLOGSPOT page of Mr Kinuthia, the wannabe arrowhead of that effort aimed at ridiculing my country.

For a while now, some have been massaging their egos and talking about how the Nigerians intend to adopt the template used by a certain East African army going into Mali, even without any evidence as is characteristic of some of these online rumour mills where people have no regard for credibility but would rather engage in window dressing or say anything just to look good. Mr Kinuthia, to sound authoritative, has even gone ahead to posit that on-the-ground observers have told him so.

As he goads his crowd down a clear path of folly, he should carefully consider the reach of this blog and what the implications of Nigeria bashing are likely to be, given the heavy subscription to this blog by big hitters in the global defence communication orbit. If we set our hearts on running down anyone here, it is likely to gain currency in strategic circles and to lead to great discomfiture and gnashing of teeth.

As I write this, the task in Mali remains CTCOIN for which Nigeria has trained 8,000 troops in 4-week basic CTCOIN proficiency and deployed same to various frontlines in 2012. That 4-week regimen has been expanded to a 7-week training cycle. As we speak, 1500 troops are in training(that makes 9,500 troops already) and a new 176 Special Forces Battalion was formed October 1st to add to the existing 72 Special Forces Bn. Right there, you have a division of CTCOIN-biased/SpecOps troops.

For our East African readers, I suggest you read the following and not allow yourselves to be used for a potentially perilous game of brickbats for which we demonstrably have a lot of energy as well.

Enough said.

READ:

There is NOTHING happening in Mali which we have not trained for in our most diverse environment here in Nigeria or garnered combat experience in for that matter.

(Ghana is spatially too small to have a foothold in the desert so they assume that we do not know anything about desert warfare – typical Kwesi Aning – Anna Hirsch combo. In their minds, Nigeria and Ghana must be lumped into the same boat of military misfits at all costs)

MAKE SURE that your ripostes are blistering and that they thoroughly expose this self-loathing jingoist for the charlattan and tale bearer that she is.

With the glut of embedded links shown above, it is clear that with Nigeria, Afua Hirsch ALWAYS writes with a made-up mind and an easy disposition towards defamation. If she were not a lazy and evil journalist, she should have crosschecked what she claims to have been told by an unnamed official, if only for the sake of journalisic balance.

Sadly and as always, she wrote with evil designs in mind and that was why she threw journalistic ethics out of the window. Not that there are not enough resource materials available online which would have blown the ‘unnamed’ official’s drivel to bits at the first check.

Without mincing words and as recompense for anyone aiding the propagation of misinformation targeted against Nigeria…even after a year of pictorial tribute to East African armies in Somalia on this blog, there is bound to be a backblast championed by me and putting all our considerable energies into the effort. It would be interpreted as a battle line drawn and followed up as such. One good turn deserves another. So does one bad turn.

If anyone feels the need to prop themselves, using a DEMONSTRABLY FALSE report which should not be difficult for any military savvy person in East Africa to decipher, Nigeria does not have to be made a fall guy for the attainment of that ‘patriotic’ aspiration. You heard me.

After all, it is not as if one has not been seeing those irritating reports and photos posted by Somali media which abound online. There is a reason why we refused to aid and abet the distribution of same online – something which woulf greatly aid their intended campaign of misinformation.

Afua Hirsch is a Ghanaian. Expecting her to write something edifying about Nigeria is like expecting a Tanzanian to say something good about a Kenyan.

I personally choose to see opportunity
in ‘negativity’. Any ‘bad press’ or even
realistic negative issues, means that
your protagonists will always expect
you to respond….What their intents
are, perpetuated in dispositions, intrigue or posturing are determined in
your ‘official response’, ‘no response’ or
‘timely response’. In this time and age
of blogs ‘timely-disseminated’
responses are the way to go in my
opinion (Like you’ve always diligently done). I don’t see how ‘blog-
censorship’ can dissipate general
‘unofficial discourse’ into said
‘negative issues’ and or whether
abstinence from partaking or delving
into the said ‘negativities’ actually kills the propagated agendas of the
reportage. For a big African blog hitter
like Beegeagle I believe ‘moral high-
ground’ based on ‘reasonable’
evidences should be the over-riding
option or preference (like you’ve always called for), as opposed to ‘thinly
veiled’ threats of ‘blog-censorship’ or
brick-braking….’we will ALL be the
losers otherwise as Africans’, that is
clarity not an assumption!!!

The solution to all this nonsense for nigeria, is to be the best it can be. For if we dare put our best foot forward any hate induced comparisms by other lilliputian nations with a napoleonic complex would be a mute point.

Our leaders should dare to be great. If nigeria had the armed forces and the capabilities, it could easily afford, do you guys think we would be enduring any insults from kenyans that finally cut their teeth in real life combat.

And while beegeagle’s blog was effusive with praise for the KDF and their other amisom counterparts, this power projection was in fact, merely a cross border operation. I once advised that they should temper their understandable elation, with the fact that greater feats have been accomplished by african armies on this continent thru the decades.

I don’t know why africans must have the crabs in a barrel mentality, where one crab pulls down another, in it’s effort to get out of the barrell.

This is the mark of a small mindedness, a lack of confidence in one’s self or one’s nation.

As a nigerian, I am self assured and so confident in nigeria’s potential, that I can sing the praises of every other african nation till dawn, and it not take a way from the just due of nigeria.

Oga mi I don’t know it has even become A TRADITION TILL WE HAD TO TELL GADAFFI ( MAY HIS WRETCHED SOUL CONTINUE TO ROT IN SOME GOD FORSAKEN DESERT TO SHUT UP) . Some of them have become experts on how to solve Nigeria’s problem by giving us unsolicited advice.
Deep down in my heart I wish all my fellow Africans well however there is wishful thinking and there is reality. The reality stares Africans in the face everyday.Mali is the latest example papa france will not put boots on the ground the reality is Nigeria WILL other countries WILL NOT. President Sire leaf (sp?) of Liberia recognized that long time ago and till today a Nigeria has been the coas of Liberia. Nigeria does not need a template to undertake a Malian invasion from any country in the World they HAVE BEEN THERE DONE THAT TWICE.So to those self loathing JINGOISTS we shall ignore you.
My last comments are this: when the real fighting let us see who does the fighting and who does the sentry duty and whose uniforms are immaculate and whose are blood stained.